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Michael Howard

Michael Howard

Chief Executive Officer

MariaDB

Michael Howard brings decades of leadership in the enterprise software, data management, and big data industries. Most recently, Michael was CEO at C9, which he transformed into one of the leading predictive analytics companies in the CRM space and led through its acquisition by Inside Sales. Previously, Michael was CMO at Greenplum (now Pivotal), the Big Data division of EMC. He was CEO at Ingrian Networks and Outerbay, and VP of the Internet Division at Veritas and of Data Warehousing at Oracle, where he led the acquisitions of Thinking Machines, OneMeaning, and Carleton Corporation. Michael has served on the boards of Acunu and FireEye, and keynoted at a variety of conferences, including EMC World, Oracle Open World, Green Data Center Conference, Data Science Series, and many others. Michael studied Computer Science and Slavic Languages and Literatures at University of California, Berkeley.

The velocity of change in today’s world, regarding new opportunities, as well as new threats, can only be handled by technology that is a reflection of our times. State sponsored cyberattacks on private companies, or operational leverage of machine learning, are just two examples of threats and opportunities that were unheard of five years ago. This duality is the new normal, and past methods of proprietary responses cannot continue. Accordingly, the world is moving. Only a well organized community of innovation can keep up. Therein lies the strategic mandate of Open Source. Michael Howard will illustrate the key points of this mandate, exemplified through innovation and how MariaDB is helping some of the largest organizations in the world into the era of Open Source.